Are you there when your people need you?  

Is this what your people see or perceive when they are looking for your support, advice, a decision or any other number of issues that are very important for them to do their job?

• How much of your time do you spend being available to your people versus being on conference calls with HQ, writing reports, travelling and other non-team oriented activities?
• Do your people avoid trying to discuss their challenges with you “because they know you are always too busy”?
• Do you regularly initiate a conversation with your people or do you assume they are ‘OK’ because they haven’t approached you?
• Are the majority of the meetings you have with your people usually formal or about some issue with their performance?
• In any one week, how many times do you talk to individuals in your team other than in a formal group meeting?

If the answers are that you spend very little time with your people coaching them to excel in their endeavours, you run the risk of a demoralised team, poor results and even losing some of your best people.

There is never enough time.

Being a manager means that you have a multitude of ‘important’ things competing for your time and attention.  There are management reports to be written. You have to create your presentations for the next Quarterly Review.  Urgent customer critical situations must be dealt with. Etc., etc.  It seems that no matter what you do, there never seems to be enough time to cover everything you ‘must do’.

Does this mean you are a poor time manager or that you are ‘out of your depth’?  That can happen but in the majority of cases another approach can resolve the problem.

Are you managing or leading?

Peter Drucker (Drucker, 1991, p. 59), the pre-eminent authority on management, defined the manager’s job as: “It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results”.  This is distinctly different to being a leader.

By definition, a leader is someone that others choose to follow.  Based on their research of highly effective business leaders, Kouzes and Posner (Kouzes & Posner, 1997, p. 9), acclaimed leadership experts, found that these leaders demonstrated 5 key attributes: Challenging the process; inspiring a shared vision; enabling others to act; modelling the way and encouraging the heart.

The role of ‘managers’ today usually requires a blend of both management and leadership as defined above.  Let’s use the term manager here to encompass both disciplines.  Day to day situations will determine where on the continuum between pure management and pure leadership that the manager must operate at any given time.

One common requirement, no matter what level of management/leadership is required, is effective interaction between the manager and the people that will complete the allocated tasks or execute the strategy.  In the case of management, these will be the people who officially report to them.  Where leadership is required, this will be the people, who may or may not report to the manager and that are necessary to operate as a cohesive team to achieve the desired outcome.

Management or leadership: it is all about the people.

Being there to support the team.

So how do you effectively perform all of the necessary tasks that you have to do whilst being there for your people?  There is no ‘silver bullet’ answer but here are some insights that I have gained through my years in management and leadership:

• Your success is the sum of your people’s success. Never forget: your people achieve the results, you organise and enable them to do so.
• Delegate. As far as possible, off-load the non-leadership tasks to someone who can probably do a better job of them than you. There are many other tasks that your team can take over from you provided you actively delegate and empower them to make decisions.
• Structure. Where necessary, ensure the structure of the team and their roles is effective and adequate.
• Avoid anything that distracts you from supporting your team. ‘Big Picture’ conference calls may seem essential but all too often they end up a ‘gab-fest’ with no definite outcome.  Meanwhile, your team sees you involved in these and learns that you are ‘too busy’ to talk to them.
• Get the right people. Be clear that your team are aligned with the mission.  Where anyone displays bad attitude, either turn them around or remove the ‘bad apple’ from the team.  If they aren’t happy and they won’t ‘get on the bus’, get them off before they destroy the morale of the rest of the team.
• Skill your team. Ensure that your team have the necessary attributes and skills to meet the challenges of the role they have.  No matter how experienced they are, keep the updates and training coming to them, particularly as new techniques and technologies evolve.
• Share the vision and the strategy to achieve it. People cannot ‘buy in’ to something that they don’t know about or that they don’t understand.
• Agree their plans and assist them to achieve them. Provided they understand the ‘big picture’ and where the organisation is going, you can agree a plan with them to contribute.  You can then jointly monitor their progress and offer advice on how to keep on track.
• Systematically meet or call them. Practice “management by wandering around”.  Do not wait for them to contact you.  In many instances people are afraid of approaching their ‘boss’ for fear of annoying them or seeming incompetent if they ask a question that may be deemed ‘stupid’.
• Send the right signals. People read the ‘signals’ that you send whether they are intentional or not.  If you are out of the office or unavailable most of the time, they gain the impression that whatever you are doing is more important than them and the team.  If you seem stressed and unhappy, they will pick up on that and stay well away from you.  If they don’t understand your ‘sense of humour’ they will avoid being near you for fear of either seeming stupid or being offended.  If you carry yourself in a positive, relatively happy and approachable manner it will send the signals that you are ‘there for them’ which will enable constructive dialogue.
• Start every day remembering why you are there. Your only reason for being there is to manage and lead your people toward the required targets.

Be there for your people.

Whether you have an office or a ‘virtual’ organisation, if you are to be successful as a manager it is mandatory that you are ‘there’ for your people.  Every situation is unique so you have to choose what you will apply, or not, from the suggestions above then apply them along with other strategies to ensure the success of your people as individuals and as a team.

Philip Belcher, LSE Consulting ©

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References

Drucker, P. (1991). Business Classics: 15 Key Concepts for Managerial Success. Boston: HBR Press.

Kouzes, & Posner. (1997). The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.